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Communicative Competence F.Heidary
'The Concept of Communicative Competence ' In an attempt to clarify the concept of communicative competence, Widdowson (1983) made a distinction between competence and capacity. He defined competence, i.e. communicative competence, in terms of the knowledge of linguistic and sociolinguistic conventions. Under capacity, which he often referred to as procedural or communicative capacity, he understood the ability to use knowledge as means of creating meaning in a language. According to him, ability is not a component of competence. Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1983) understood communicative competence as a synthesis of an underlying system of knowledge and skill needed for communication. In their concept of communicative competence, knowledge refers to the (conscious or unconscious) knowledge of an individual about language and about other aspects of language use. According to them, there are three types of knowledge: knowledge of underlying grammatical principles, knowledge of how to use language in a social context in order to fulfill communicative functions and knowledge of how to combine utterances and communicative functions with respect to discourse principles. In addition, their concept of skill refers to how an individual can use the knowledge in actual communication. Unlike Hymes, Canale and Swain or even Widdowson, Savignon (1972, 1983) put a much greater emphasis on the aspect of ability in her concept of communicative competence. Namely, she described communicative competence as ≪the ability to function in a truly communicative setting – that is, in a dynamic exchange in which linguistic competence must adapt itself to the total informational input, both linguistic and paralinguistic, of one or more interlocutors” (Savignon, 1972:8). According to her, and many other theoreticians (e.g. Canale and Swain, 1980; Skehan, 1995, 1998; Bachman and Palmer, 1996 etc.), the nature of communicative competence is not static but dynamic, it is more interpersonal than intrapersonal and relative rather than absolute. As to the distinction between competence and performance, Savignon referred to competence as an underlying ability and to performance as an open manifestation of competence. In her opinion, competence can be observed, developed, maintained and evaluated only through performance. Like many theoreticians in the field of language learning and teaching (e.g. Stern, 1986), Savignon equates communicative competence with language proficiency. Bachman (1990) suggested using the term ≪communicative language ability≫, claiming that this term combines in itself the meanings of both language proficiency and communicative competence. Leaning especially on Hymes, Widdowson and Candlin, Bachman defined communicative language ability as a concept comprised of knowledge or competence and capacity for appropriate use of knowledge in a contextual communicative language use. 'Models of communicative competence ' Recent theoretical and empirical research on communicative competence is largely based on three models of communicative competence: the model of Canale and Swain, the model of Bachman and Palmer and the description of components of communicative language competence in the Common European Framework (CEF). '' In Canale and Swain (1980, 1981), grammatical competence is mainly defined in terms of Chomsky’s linguistic competence, which is why some theoreticians (e.g. Savignon, 1983), whose theoretical and/or empirical work on communicative competence was largely based on the model of Canale and Swain, use the term ≪linguistic competence≫ for ≪grammatical competence≫. According to Canale and Swain, grammatical competence is concerned with mastery of the linguistic code (verbal or non-verbal) which includes vocabulary knowledge as well as knowledge of morphological, syntactic, semantic, phonetic and orthographic rules. This competence enables the speaker to use knowledge and skills needed for understanding and expressing the literal meaning of utterances. Canale (1983, 1984) described discourse competence as mastery of rules that determine ways in which forms and meanings are combined to achieve a meaningful unity of spoken or written texts. The unity of a text is enabled by cohesion in form and coherence in meaning. Cohesion is achieved by the use of cohesion devices (e.g. pronouns, conjunctions, synonyms, parallel structures etc.) which help to link individual sentences and utterances to a structural whole. The means for achieving coherence, for instance repetition, progression, consistency, relevance of ideas etc., enable the organization of meaning, i.e. establish a logical relationship between groups of utterances. Despite the simplicity of the model of Canale and Swain, this model has dominated the fi elds of second and foreign language acquisition and language testing for more than a decade. Moreover, the tendency to use this model, or refer to it, has remained even after Bachman (1990) and Bachman and Palmer (1996) proposed a much more comprehensive model of communicative competence. The easiness with which the model of Canale and Swain can be applied is probably the main reason why many researchers of communicative competence still use it. Taking into consideration the results of prior theoretical and empirical research, in the late 1980s, Bachman proposed a new model of communicative competence or, more precisely, the model of communicative language ability. That model was, however, slightly altered by Bachman and Palmer in the mid 1990s. According to Bachman and Palmer (1996), many traits of language users such as some general characteristics, their topical knowledge, affective schemata and language ability influence the communicative language ability. The crucial characteristic is their language ability which is comprised of two broad areas – language knowledge and strategic competence. Language knowledge consists of two main components – organizational knowledge and pragmatic knowledge which complement each other in achieving communicatively effective language use. In Bachman and Palmer’s model, organizational knowledge is composed of abilities engaged in a control over formal language structures, i.e. of grammatical and textual knowledge. Grammatical knowledge includes several rather independent areas of knowledge such as knowledge of vocabulary, morphology, syntax, phonology, and graphology. They enable recognition and production of grammatically correct sentences as well as comprehension of their propositional content. Textual knowledge enables comprehension and production of (spoken or written) texts. It covers the knowledge of conventions for combining sentences or utterances into texts, i.e. knowledge of cohesion (ways of marking semantic relationships among two or more sentences in a written text or utterances in a conversation) and knowledge of rhetorical organization (way of developing narrative texts, descriptions, comparisons, classifications etc.) or conversational organization (conventions for initiating, maintaining and closing conversations). Pragmatic knowledge refers to abilities for creating and interpreting discourse. It includes two areas of knowledge: knowledge of pragmatic conventions for expressing acceptable language functions and for interpreting the illocutionary power of utterances or discourse (functional knowledge) and knowledge of sociolinguistic conventions for creating and interpreting language utterances which are appropriate in a particular context of language use (sociolinguistic knowledge). Strategic knowledge is conceived in the model as a set of metacognitive components which enable language user involvement in goal setting, assessment of communicative sources, and planning. Goal setting includes identifying a set of possible tasks, choosing one or more of them and deciding whether or not to attempt to complete them. Assessment is a means by which language use context is related to other areas of communicative language ability: topical knowledge and affective schemata. Planning involves deciding how to make use of language knowledge and other components involved in the process of language use to complete the chosen task successfully. The last model we will refer to is the model or description of communicative language competence in the CEF (2001), the model which is intended for assessment as well as for learning and teaching of languages. In the CEF, communicative competence is conceived only in terms of knowledge. It includes three basic components – language competence, sociolinguistic competence and pragmatic competence. Thus, strategic competence is not its componential part. It is interesting, however, that each component of language knowledge is explicitly defined as knowledge of its contents and ability to apply it. The subcomponents of language competence are lexical, grammatical, semantic, phonological, and orthographic competences. Sociolinguistic competence refers to possession of knowledge and skills for appropriate language use in a social context. The last component in this model - pragmatic competence - involves two subcomponents: discourse competence and functional competence. A part of both of these competences is the so-called planning competence which refers to sequencing of messages in accordance with interactional and transactional schemata. Strategic competence is mentioned in the part the CEF dedicated to a discussion of communicative language use. This competence is conceived as strategy use in the broadest sense. Thus, the stress is put not only on the use of communication strategies which can help to overcome the lack in a particular area of language knowledge but on the use of all types of communication strategies. As to the authors of the CEF, the use of strategies can be compared with the application of metacognitive principles (planning, achieving, controlling and correcting) on different forms of language activity: reception, interaction, production and meditating. REFERENCES Bachman, L.F. (1990). ''Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. Oxford etc.: OUP. Bachman, L.F., & Palmer, A.S. (1996). Language Testing in Practice: Designing and '' '' Developing Useful Language Tests. Oxford etc.: OUP. Canale, M. (1983). From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. In Richards, J. C., & Schmidt, R. W. (Eds.), Language '' '' and Communication, ''2-27. London: Longman. Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1981). A Theoretical Framework for Communicative Competence. In Palmer, A., Groot, P., & Trosper, G. (Eds.), ''The construct '' '' validation of test of communicative competence, 31-36. Hymes, D. H. (1972). On Communicative Competence. In Pride, J. B., & Holmes, J. (Eds.), ''Sociolinguistics, ''269-293. Baltimore, USA: Penguin Education, Penguin Books Ltd. Savignon, S. J. (1983). ''Communicative Competence: Theory and Classroom '' '' Practice. Texts and Contexts in Second Language Learning. ''Reading, Massachusetts at all: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.